PERSONAL UPDATE

THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY OF AUGUST IN THE YEAR OF GRACE TWO THOUSAND AND SIXTEEN.

This update is coming to you from Sara Faye, scribe, and me, “dictator.” Following successful back surgery on Monday August 15, and three nights at Methodist Hospital West in Katy, I moved to Memorial Hermann Rehab Hospital Katy with expected return home on September 3. I am grateful to God for his presence with my surgeon whose skill has taken away my leg pain. I am grateful to you, my gracEmail family, for your prayers and emails expressing good wishes. Many thanks also, for prayers, cards, visits, and other expressions of solidarity and good wishes from friends nearby. A number of you are also undergoing enormous pain and other distresses, and I remember you in my prayers as well.

As always, I encountered admirable, indeed extraordinary, individuals among the medical professionals and staff during hospitilizations. Desiree is one such example. A nurses’s aide, she performed her work with both care and skill. Something about her suggested a deeper character and maturity than might have been evident at first glance. Our final conversation with her confirmed that truth. She had served as a nurse’s aide during three wars (Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan) in 15 years in the military, and she did so, she said, with a sense of God’s calling and mission.

She is now working on a graduate degree while continuing to serve the sick and suffering, trusting God’s guidance of her life. Until she is “released” from her commitment, she serves as a thank you to God for bringing her safely home. Her story reminds me that happiness in one’s work does not come from and does not depend on extraordinary income or prestige and position, but on viewing one’s work as “unto the Lord,” and serving God by performing it well.